Poker is a card game played between two or more players and involving betting. It is a game of skill and chance and there are many variants of the game, but they all have some common features. The basic premise is that each player has a hand of five cards, which are revealed in the end of the betting round. The best hand wins the pot.
The game is played from a standard pack of 52 cards with four suits: spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs. Some games use more than one pack or add wild cards (called jokers). Regardless of the number of cards, all poker hands contain five cards and are ranked in inverse order to their mathematical frequency. Exceptional hands such as straight flushes and four of a kind are highly valuable, while weaker hands such as a full house are less desirable.
Before dealing the cards, one player, as designated by the rules of the variant being played, places a forced bet into the pot, called an ante or blind bet. The dealer then shuffles and deals the cards, face down or face up depending on the game being played, starting with the player to their left.
In the first betting round, the dealer puts three community cards on the table that anyone can use. This is called the flop and is where much of the action occurs. After the flop there is another betting round and in the third stage, known as the turn, an additional community card is revealed.